1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to multimedia, particularly rich media systems and methods of operation. More particularly, the invention relates to systems and methods for managing the creation, storage, search, and delivery of rich media optimized for e-commerce in a distributed information network, e.g., the Internet.
2. Description of Prior Art
Rich media is multimedia content that includes 2D or 3D animation, video and audio, fill-in forms, pull-down menus and typically allows for greater end-user interactivity. Through the higher degrees of interactivity, brand recall and direct response, rich media in on-line advertising is proving to significantly influence the end result and impact of campaigns. With rich media, online advertisers can create interactive banner ads or catalogs which more effectively steer consumers through the buying process using a variety of rich media effects including panoramas, animated GIFs, panning and scrolling images, multi-track animations, zoomable/multi-resolution images, audio and video presentations.
Rich media has found novel new applications. One such is the product description in e-commerce solutions. Let's think of the vivid applications that can be created with rich media technology in an e-commerce application. For example, in a fashion application, rich media will allow a sales representative or a customer to search for accessories that match the color of a garment; or in an on-line art catalog, rich media allows art teachers or historians to search for paintings that have a particular texture; or in a clip art service, rich media allows clients to select graphics for inclusion in documents based on a particular pattern, such as the vertical slats of a fence or the concentric arcs of a rainbow. That means, with the advent of content based search mechanisms, people tend to use a natural way to seek information such as visual features like color percentage, color layout, and textures occurring in the visual rich media contents.
More specifically, if a customer was interested in beautiful fashion clothes when visiting an on-line shopping mall, the customer would like to see the detail in rich-media powered advertisement. At that time, the customer would like to make queries of large rich media database based on visual pattern features and key words. But unfortunately, so far, this kind of technology has not been available. That is, the current search engines in the market cannot efficiently search the emerging rich media content-based database. The above-mentioned exciting shopping experiences are still in the future. What is needed is a system and method for managing the creation, storage, searching, and delivery of rich media optimized for e-commere in a distributed information network, e.g., the Internet. The following design goals are as follows:                1. A framework for making rich media searchable;        2. An authoring tool for creating searchable rich media content in an appropriate format;        3. A rich media database build engine for efficiently building rich media database;        4. A natural query method for searching rich media database; and        5. An efficient rich media delivery mechanism for efficiently displaying search result.        
Prior art related to multimedia database systems include the following:
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,903,892 and 5,983,176, issued May 11, 1999 and Nov. 9, 1999, respectively, disclose a method and apparatus for searching for multimedia files in a distributed database and for displaying results of the search based on the context and content of the multimedia files.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,671, issued Aug. 31, 1993, discloses a search system in which a multimedia database consists of text, picture, audio, and animated data through multiple graphical and textual entry paths. The database is searched through multiple graphical and textual entry paths. The entry paths include an idea search, a title finder search, a topic tree search, a picture explorer search, a history timeline search, a world atlas search, a researcher's assistant search, and a feature article search.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,414,644, issued May 9, 1993, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,682,330, issued Oct. 27, 1997, disclose a method of observing and comparing the visual and textual record of respective or related events recorded on a viewable media.
None of the prior art discloses a generalized system and method for managing the creation, storage, searching, and delivery of rich media optimized for e-commerce in a distributed information network, e.g., the Internet.